


Tastes so bitter and so sweet

by Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry)



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/F, Immediately Post-Canon, Lyrical Sex, PWP, minor Bloodplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:44:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8889463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageorwizardry/pseuds/Age%20or%20Wizardry
Summary: Eurydice has sex with Persephone. It doesn't really help anything.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brigdh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigdh/gifts).



Persephone raises a glass to Orpheus, Eurydice's lost beloved, and Eurydice loves her for it.

She falls.

She meets Persephone's eyes over the rim of her cup and falls into them: wine-dark eyes, just the color of a stormy sky on a day Eurydice thinks she can still remember. Eurydice starts to tell her, stumbling over her own words, how much that gesture means to her. Her gratitude for the kindness. The knife's edge of keenly felt joy and sorrow that she won't be the only one to remember Orpheus now that he's gone.

Persephone pours her more wine, smiling, and presses the cup to Eurydice's lips, stopping her words. "Grief is a bitter drink unmixed," she says. "Let's speak of other things now. Forget what you can, for tonight."

Over bread and herbed oils, over honey and cheese, over cup after cup of wine, Persephone and Eurydice talk of anything but their griefs, their dashed hopes: poetry, geology, bar games, purely theoretical logistics of alcohol smuggling. Never music. There is no fruit on Persephone's table.

Eurydice drinks, down to the bitter dregs. Persephone runs a fingertip along the rim of her own cup, still half-full. Then Persephone's finger is on Eurydice's lips. Eurydice tastes the wine from her fingertip. Beneath the wine, Persephone's fingertips taste of dust, but when she pulls Eurydice close to kiss her, her hair still smells of flowers.

Persephone sinks her fingers into Eurydice's hair as she kisses her. Eurydice imagines more than traces of stone-dust from her fingertips, leaving cold grey streaks through her hair; imagines Persephone's hair wound with riotous green vines and bright flowers beside her. Persephone's mouth tastes sweeter than the wine, and her fingers in Eurydice's hair are raindrops burrowing softly into soil, green shoots pushing through dirt toward the light. Kissing Persephone feels almost like being alive again.

Persephone kisses her, and Eurydice falls into her mouth. Her bed. She wants to taste more.

Eurydice can see why Hades would want to keep Persephone here; she might try to do it herself, if she had anything to keep her with. But Eurydice's teeth are no pomegranate seeds; if Persephone takes Eurydice's lips and tongue into her mouth, Eurydice still will hold no power over her. Eurydice bites, sharp and frustrated. Persephone gasps and grins, and the bright burst of her blood on Eurydice's tongue is like flame-red flowers falling to the surface of a pool. When they draw apart, Persephone touches the split in her lip and spreads the blood along her own lips with a finger, touches again and also traces Eurydice's lips with red.

Persephone taking off her green dress is like a blossom emerging from the bud—Eurydice can almost feel the hot summer breeze swaying red and purple flowers, heavy and full. When Eurydice too is naked, Persephone presses her to the bed, fingers first hard on Eurydice's shoulders, then trailing over her arms, tracing her ribs. Eurydice takes up her hands and grips their fingers together, tight. She wants to press Persephone's knuckles between her legs and rub against them there; and she wants to sit up and grasp Persephone's arm, thigh, ribs, breast; and she lies there breathing hard and trembling, unable to move. Filled with so many hungers and unsure where to reach first to satisfy them.

Persephone's legs move first, sliding along Eurydice's as Persephone moves down the bed: now her elbows are down on the bed by Eurydice's hips, her chin resting neatly on their hands clasped together on Eurydice's belly. Persephone's smile is a lightning bolt darting through a summer thunderstorm sky, and her tongue moves down their laced fingers on her way to Eurydice's belly, then between Eurydice's legs. Eurydice's breaths turn to gasps and her hands fly up to grasp the pillow, her own hair, her breast, as Persephone tastes her and she takes all the sweetness she's willing to offer.

Night is long in Hadestown; they come together again and again before it ends. After Eurydice finishes the first time, she does seize Persephone in all the places she wants to, leaving bruises in ripe summer fruit. She tastes the acorns of Persephone's nipples and the berry between her legs. Persephone's fingers in Eurydice make her bite Persephone's lips again. When they grapple close together, each straining to reach the finish first, a wrestle turned into a race, Eurydice feels her own heart and blood pounding as fast as Persephone's, pressed so close to hers. Persephone's dark curls wind around Eurydice's wrists like ivy, and even Persephone's eyebrows against Eurydice's lips taste sweet. They drink wine from the bottle shared between them instead of resting, between their bouts, and Eurydice forgets all she can.

In the morning, Persephone leaves for the living world again. "I'll look in on Orpheus for you when I go up; is there any message you want me to take to him?" she asks Eurydice, face bright as a clear summer day, and the fragile cup of kindness Eurydice has been carrying within herself, filled overnight with their kisses and touches, falls to the floor and spills empty. Of course: she is the only one who will never see Orpheus again. He lives, and the whole wide world may look upon his face in the sunlight. Of course, she is alone in her grief after all. Eurydice shakes her head silently, looking away. As Persephone dresses, Eurydice doesn't watch; instead she moves through the room, picking up their bottles and plates from the previous night, dusting up the crumbs.

Persephone saw herself in Eurydice, she said, but Eurydice knew even then she was wrong; neither their love stories nor the girls in them are the same. If Persephone looked at Eurydice and saw only an echo of herself, it could only have been foolish for Eurydice to look for herself in Persephone. For a moment, their griefs overlapped; that's all. Eurydice tries very hard never to be foolish in the same way twice.

Eurydice once trusted Orpheus, then she chose Hades, and now she's tried falling for Persephone. After all of them, she's left here with nothing she'd hoped for: just herself. She's been in this place before, and she knows its walls and shape just as well as she's now learning the walls and limits of Hades' underground city.

When she walks out alone into the forge-light of Hadestown, she won't watch Persephone leave or wait by the railroad tracks for her return. There's work to do, and she has forever to figure out what she's going to do next.

**Author's Note:**

> My beta encouraged me to include these Notes from the Beta Process as endnotes, so here they are:
> 
> me: I figure Persephone *is* the goddess of summer; this may just be what sleeping with her is like! :-P
> 
> beta: hahaha like you have sex and all around you little flowers spring up
> 
> [...]
> 
> me: I had also considered having Eurydice taste honey from Persephone's nipples, and wonder whether it was really there or she was imagining it, but couldn't figure out exactly how to put it. just ~having sex with the goddess of summer~ things
> 
> They also found this link discussing the description of nipples in romance novel sex scenes, with a hilarious comments section: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2012/03/a-description-of-nipples/


End file.
